Generation Next General Education Requirements

Generation Next Elements:

The purpose of the First Year Seminar (FYS) is to prepare new students for the creative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous modes of inquiry that characterize a York College education as is expected in major and non-major (general education) courses. The FYS is intended to create a sense of intellectual community for students and faculty, to emphasize attainment of key learning outcomes, to introduce students to college-level rigor and expectations, to encourage the academic growth of students, and to purposefully expose students to a variety of co-curricular experiences and resources available at York College. Courses include:FYS 100 First-Year Seminar FYS 101 First-Year Seminar (Graham Innovation Scholars)FYS 110 (EDU200) Education in Today’s Society (This course is designed for all education majors.)

Foundations courses are meant to serve as the initial building block for student learning. This is where you start building the skills that will be the basis of what you learn throughout college and beyond. Students will take Foundations courses in the following areas:

First-Year Communication: This course will focus on providing students with the initial basis for acquiring written, oral, and visual communication skills, and will facilitate acquisition of active reading, information literacy, inquiry-based learning, and critical/analytical thinking skills. Students who do not meet minimum placement standards may be required to complete additional coursework and/or supplementary instruction that ensure that they meet Communication outcomes.FCO 105 Rhetorical Communication

Advanced Communication: In order to provide reinforcement of the Communication outcome and its associated skills in a manner that is contextualized for specific disciplines at a more advanced level, major programs are required to include an Advanced Communication requirement. This requirement for students may take the form of 1) a majors-based course that emphasizes the continued development of oral, written, and visual communication skills, 2) a general Communication course (not focused on major) which emphasizes the continued development of oral, written, and visual communication skills, or 3) completion of a series of courses offered as part of the major program that provide intensive attention to Communication skills development. Courses include:CM 212 Public SpeakingFCO 210 (WRT210) Communication in Professional CulturesFCO 215 Technical and Scientific CommunicationFCO 225 (WRT225) Interdisciplinary Communication

Global Citizenship:Students have the option to complete the Global Citizenship requirement by successfully completing six credits of the same foreign language in specific majors. Students must refer to the Programs of Study section of the College catalog to verify which majors permit this option. Not all majors have this option available.

Disciplinary Perspectives courses: These courses demonstrate the ways that knowledge is constructed in various academic disciplines. The courses taken within Disciplinary Perspectives introduce students to concepts and methodologies of that particular broad disciplinary realm. These courses use the content to expose the methodologies that disciplines use to arrive at that knowledge. These courses provide students with the genuine basis for integrative learning in the Constellations and in the majors. Provided with such an understanding, students are better prepared to take on more in-depth work in a variety of disciplines, and apply other disciplinary approaches to their own major-specific work. Students will take courses in the following areas:

Constellations are groupings of courses around broad themes that can be addressed using multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives. Constellations build upon the skills acquired in the Foundations courses and the base of knowledge and methodologies acquired in the Disciplinary Perspectives courses. Constellations will allow students to apply higher-level thinking and communication skills while increasing the breadth and depth of their education. The Constellations will be structured to help students integrate ideas from different disciplines, as well as the co-curricular, in an intentional way. They will allow students see the connections between what they have learned in different general education courses, as well as help them make connections between the general education curriculum and their major. Students will take courses in a Constellation from a minimum of three disciplines.